The United Nations yesterday attacked the government's record on race relations, expressing "deep concern" over the number of racist attacks and condemning the plight of asylum seekers in Britain.

At a meeting in Geneva, the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination said that ethnic minorities in Britain were feeling "increasingly vulnerable" to racist attacks and harassment. It also condemned institutional racism in the police and other public bodies which, it said, had led to "serious shortcomings with regard to investigations into racist incidents".

The damning criticism came in response to a report submitted to the UN in May by the British government into what measures had been taken to tackle racism over the past three years.

Officials from the Home Office and the Foreign Office travelled to Switzerland last week to try to head off criticism, insisting that the government had met most of the committee's recommendations from the last UN report on Britain, soon after Labour came to power in 1997.

But in an embarrassing report, the UN committee, which meets every three years and is responsible for monitoring racism in member states, urged Britain to "take leadership in sending out positive messages about asylum seekers" and formulate ways of protecting them from racial harassment.

It urged the government to tackle high unemployment and school exclusion rates among ethnic minorities, and recommended that ministers develop a cross-departmental strategy to combat racial discrimination.

The report did, however, praise recent moves by the home secretary, Jack Straw, to increase penalties for racially motivated crimes. It also welcomed the government's action plan developed following the publication of the Macpherson report in February 1999 into the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence.

The UN's concerns follow a report submitted by more than 30 human rights organisations, including the civil rights group Liberty, the anti-racist 1990 Trust and the Refugee Council which condemned the government's record on race relations and deaths in custody, and claimed that the policy on asylum-seekers "gives comfort to racists" and has led to increased racial tension.

Ministers will be disappointed that the UN committee backed many of the criticisms made by British civil rights groups.

A Home Office spokesman said: "We have not yet seen this report and obviously we will want to look at it in detail before commenting on specific criticisms, but we believe that some of the comments are unfair."

"Promoting racial equality is a top priority for this government, which has done more to promote race equality than any previous government."